Girls Just Want to Have Fun: The Woman Who Hates Waiting Goes to Comic-Con

Last summer, we took the family to Disney and spent thousands of dollars on fast passes. Didn't even think twice about it.

That's how much I hate waiting in line.

A few weeks ago, I took my teenager to the DMV and asked the clerk behind the counter if they had considered a similar program; she was not amused.

I as serious. Charge me twenty bucks to skip the line and use that money to fix a pothole somewhere. Everybody wins.

I've always had a deep distaste for crowds, lines, and standing in one place for more than 4 minutes. By the time I could afford concert tickets that didn't involve camping on the sidewalk the night before, I had no interest in going.

Which makes what I'm about to do wildly out of character: in a few days, I'm flying alone to San Diego Comic-Con.

And I plan to spend a significant portion of that trip waiting in line.

I want a great seat in Hall H on Marvel Day.

In normal person terms, that's like saying, "I want to go to the Super Bowl, but only pay twenty bucks and ride there with the team."

Hall H is where the major studios reveal new movies, shows, footage and trailers no one has ever seen, and cast members parade out like the starting lineup for Game 7.

Hall H can seat 6,500 people. San Diego Comic-Con draws well over 100,000 people.

The math is not encouraging.

I’ve spent months researching hotels, clothes, line groups, weather, and a whole bunch of ‘didn’t know I needed this’ things.

On sheer impulse, and not really expecting a reply, I messaged a stranger on Reddit about a e line group he had mentioned. He added me to their Discord (much to my daughter’s amusement).

Very quickly I learned that this was not simply thousands of people jockeying for position in the Nerd Hunger Games. People form groups. They assign shifts and share supplies and updates.

We have a spreadsheet. I hear color-coded wristbands are involved in this process.

Yes, it is that deep.

All of this just to sit in a room to see something that will probably be on TikTok 10 minutes later.

That sounds completely irrational until you see what it feels like in there. When Robert Downey Jr. was revealed in Hall H as Doctor Doom in 2024, I saw this from home and almost fell out of my chair:

(No skipping ahead. Yes, I recognize the irony.)

I saw it about ten minutes after it happened. But I wasn't there.

And TikTok only satisfies so much.

My daughter watched her first superhero movie, Iron Man, at eight years old, sitting beside me.

At nineteen, she was sitting beside me when Tony Stark died in Endgame.

Twelve years of movies, inside jokes, favorite lines, and debates about characters' intentions and feelings...it was our thing. But after Endgame, the MCU just wasn't hitting the highest notes for us anymore.

When the Doctor Doom reveal happened at Comic-Con, my daughter and I were texting each other in all caps; suddenly, everything old was new again.

That's part of my why I'm jumping through the Hall H hoops. It gives us something new to argue about. (I kid, but not by much.)

But I'm also doing this for me.

For the past three years, my life has been schedules, sports, carpools, appointments, school messages, household logistics, and the overall daily routine of a full house.

I've had help - I haven't done any of this by myself. But I've become the communications hub at home, and I realized I've lost touch with some of my own delightfully pointless interests.

This trip serves no practical purpose whatsoever, which may be the most compelling thing about it.

My husband, The Balkan Storm, understands it. He grew up watching Star Trek, and saw Captain Kirk lead the Enterprise with confidence, logic, and a willingness to make the hard decisions.

Minus the womanizing, thank God, he developed a very successful leadership style around much of that same philosophy.

Nobody sees that as 'Star Trek fan stuff'; they call him a good boss.

Stories give us examples of courage, loyalty, sacrifice, and a lot of times, the deep satisfaction of watching a bad guy get his ass kicked. And sometimes a superhero movie is just a superhero movie.

But sometimes it's twelve years of experiences with your only daughter and a reason to book a flight to San Diego.

There are no fast passes for Hall H (damn it). So here I am, the woman who spent thousands to avoid Disney lines, preparing to spend days of her vacation among thousands of strangers in a tiny camp chair.

It will be equal parts fun and a colossal pain in the ass, literally and figuratively.

But I get it now - that anticipation is part of the experience. I skipped it in my twenties and paid to skip it in my thirties and forties.

This time, screw it.

I'm flying two thousand miles from home, alone, to do something my sensible, practical self never would've considered.

I am stupidly excited.

And I think maybe that's what I've been missing: the feeling that something fun is still ahead for me.

I still hate waiting, though.

If SDCC ever starts selling Lightning Lanes, all bets are off.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.